The New Transformational Leader: 5 Imperatives for Thriving in a Hyperconnected World

The transformation
mandate
Leadership imperatives for a
hyperconnected world

The transformation mandate:
Leadership imperatives for
a hyperconnected world
is written by experts and
practitioners of Heidrick &
Struggles‘ executive search,
leadership consulting, and
culture-shaping services.
To send comments or to
request copies, e-mail us:
WEF@heidrick.com
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Liddle, Jen Nelson, Lia
Randazzo, India Simpson,
Lily Siu, Whitney Taylor,
Randall Thorne, Evan Trent,
David Turnbull
Art direction and design
Leff Communications
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© Michael Austin
Copyright © 2016 Heidrick
& Struggles, Inc. All rights
reserved.
No part of this publication may
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consent of Heidrick & Struggles.

t h e i n d i v i d u a l
The new transformational
leader
5
Winning with
purpose in the Fourth
Industrial Revolution
Valerie Germain
8
How CEOs manage
doubt
Bonnie Gwin
10
What leadership
shadow do you cast?
Jim Hart and Larry Senn
13
What’s your leadership
signature?
Brian Reger, Elliott Stixrud, and
Karen Rosa West
t h e t e a m
Speed and stability:
A winning dynamic for teams
t h e o r g a n i z a t i o n
Shaping the agile
organization
Contents
17
Accelerating
performance in teams
Colin Price and Sharon Toye
24
Five steps to better
team performance
Colin Price and Carolyn Vavrek
27
Can your leaders
deliver on your growth
strategy?
Andrew Kakabadse,
Steve Mullinjer, and
David Pumphrey
33
Leading change:
Five CEOs on the power
of culture transformation
Gary Shorb, CEO of Methodist
Le Bonheur Healthcare
Dominique Leroy, CEO of Proximus
Basil Scarsella, CEO of UK Power
Networks
Bryan Jordan, CEO of First Horizon
National Corporation
Joe Robles, former CEO of USAA
40
Winning the race
Colin Price and Krishnan Rajagopalan
43
The importance
of a growth mind-set
in a digital world
David Boehmer, William Rackham,
and Dustin Seale
2
introduc tion
Leading
transformation:
Five imperatives
for CEOs
Tracy R. Wolstencroft
48
parting thought
What’s slowing
you down?

As we enter the Fourth Industrial Revolution,
hyperconnectivity is emerging as the defining
characteristic of the era — with profound implica-
tions for CEOs, senior leadership teams, and
entire organizations. In a hyperconnected world,
incremental improvement is not enough to stay
ahead of disruptive competitors. Winning requires
continual transformation.
Technology that has enabled the always-connected
consumer is generating massive economic oppor-
tunity for nimble, asset-light organizations. Uber,
Alibaba, and Airbnb now have a combined implied
valuation exceeding $300 billion. Each of these
innovators has been able to quickly achieve scale
with platform business models that efficiently
match supply and demand to create value for all
parties. The result has been major disruption
to established brands in formerly capital-intensive
industries that seemed impervious to rapid change
because of high barriers to entry. CEOs around
the world are now asking, “Can that happen in our
industry?” or, more pointedly, “How can we
disrupt our own industry or create a new one?”
The technological catalysts for transformation in
the Fourth Industrial Revolution are already
emerging. “Pervasive computing” exists in a world
where the cloud, sensors, and mobile devices
all intersect, enabling an Internet of Everything that
makes machines smarter and people more
capable. Driverless cars, 3-D printing, smart homes,
smart factories, and smart cities demonstrate the
Leading transformation:
Five imperatives for CEOs
ThetransformativeCEOinahyperconnectedworlddefendsthecoremarket
andplaysoffenseasadisruptor.
range of possibilities ahead. Clearly, the hyper-
connected world is ripe with opportunity. It is also
fraught with risk. Competitive risks associated
with disruption can quickly leave a market leader
irrelevant. Risks of a malevolent nature, such as
identity theft on a massive scale, cyber-piracy, and
cyber-terrorism, can cripple an organization and
threaten stakeholder trust.
Five imperatives for CEOs driving transformation
Make no mistake: transformation can be more
difficult than disruption. Disrupters are often entrepre-
neurial upstarts, playing offense all the time. By
contrast, transformation of an established enterprise
with a substantial asset base and ongoing capital
requirements calls for a strong defense as well as an
aggressive offense.
From our work as a trusted talent and leadership
advisor to CEOs and boards at many of the world’s
most successful and influential organizations, we
offer the following five imperatives for transformative
CEOs today. The first three specifically address our
hyperconnected world; the final two have stood the
test of time but have additional urgency in an era
of constant change.
1. Strengthen the core and embrace disruptive
change. The transformative CEO in a hyper-
connected world defends the core market and
plays offense as a disruptor. The CEO must
work diligently to continuously improve the com-
petitiveness of the core business beyond
i n t r o d u c t i o n
2 The transformation mandate: Leadership imperatives for a hyperconnected world

incremental improvements to quality and cost,
while simultaneously pursuing a strategy to
reinvent the business. A healthy and growing core
operation provides a stable platform (and neces-
sary cash flow) to launch disruptive ventures with
value-creating potential.
2. Invest with courage in both the short and long
term. Winning CEOs move fast to act decisively
on pressing priorities while maintaining progress
on longer-term initiatives vital to sustainable
success. Long-term investments can put pressure
on current margins. Activist shareholders ratchet
up the pressure for immediate returns on their
investment. The forward-looking CEO thinks like
an activist investor without being prompted,
demonstrating a compelling case to clients, inves-
tors, and other stakeholders on the promise of
value to be realized down the road.
3. Accept that the life cycle of a winning strategy is
shrinking. Gone are the days of strategies defined
in years. In today’s economy, it is no longer solely
what one knows but what one is prepared to learn.
Agility is now as important as strategy because
the playing field is continually shifting. Strategic
plans must be adapted to seize opportunities
when fresh information points to emerging trends —
as well as to defend against heightened risks.
Winning CEOs embed a culture of innovation and
a low resistance to change into the organization.
4. Define an enduring purpose as your compass.
We all want to be connected to something
meaningful. A well-articulated purpose serves not
as strategy but provides a sense of “true north,”
guiding the CEO — and the entire organization —
through ambiguity and rapid change. Constancy
of purpose provides a bedrock for the organization
that would otherwise be unsettled by the constant
change inherent in transformation.
5. Attract outstanding talent. The difference
between good and great talent is orders of magni-
tude. The winning CEO’s passion, energy, drive,
and vision serve as a talent magnet, attracting top
talent from various backgrounds and geogra-
phies. Humbled by the scale and scope of hidden
opportunities and unseen risks, the winning
CEO draws strength from a truly diverse senior team,
comprised of talented individuals who each
bring a unique line of sight to the challenges ahead.
The successful CEO in a hyperconnected world
will demonstrate, model, and cultivate each
of these imperatives across three dimensions: the
leader personally, the senior leadership team,
and the entire organization.
These three dimensions — the individual leader,
team, and organization — form the structure
for the insights that follow. We hope that our
perspective informs and inspires your own thinking,
sparks candid and productive conversations
among your teams, and encourages your organization
to both embrace and fulfill its purpose, bringing
positive change to the world. 
Tracy R. Wolstencroft
President and CEO, Heidrick Struggles
Heidrick Struggles 3

The new
transformational
leader
t h e i n d i v i d u a l
5
Winning with purpose in the
Fourth Industrial Revolution
8
How CEOs manage doubt
10
What leadership shadow
do you cast?
13
What’s your leadership
signature?

Like every preceding industrial revolution,
the Fourth Industrial Revolution has caused massive
growing pains for businesses as they have moved
through the initial shocks of disruption to a more
recent, if uneasy, understanding that constant
acceleration is now, in fact, “normal.” Ready or not,
leaders must grapple with the subsequent chal-
lenges: the impact of technology and the digital world,
new and unprecedented socioeconomic implica-
tions, and significant geopolitical upheavals. All of
this forces companies and their leaders to reexamine
the whys and hows of their businesses — and to
do so at a much faster pace than ever before. It also
forces leaders to reexamine themselves.
How today’s leaders navigate and lead in such a fast-
changing environment is a dominant theme
of The CEO Report, the product of a research partner-
ship between Heidrick Struggles and the Saïd
Business School, University of Oxford.1 Our research
finds that the complexity of the new dynamics
requires a changing approach to leadership. The days
of leaders having complete command over their
organizations are gone. Today’s leaders must be inspi-
rational yet calming, visionary yet down-to-earth,
“right” and yet not afraid to “not know.” They must
be monarchs but also very human and able to
navigate their organizations through multiple, often
paradoxical demands emanating from an increas-
ing — and increasingly active — array of stakeholders.
The key is moving from a single-minded “command
and control” mentality to a more agile form of
leadership that balances command with purpose,
nimbleness, adaptability, and collaboration — all
features of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. However,
further reflection suggests that CEOs often struggle
to find the right balance between collaboration and
singular leadership. One Fortune 500 CEO described
the task as similar to balancing on two parallel tram-
lines, where it is easier to bounce from one to the
other and hardest to stay on both. Certainly this CEO
concludes that collaboration is vital, yet it para-
doxically threatens to weaken his leadership when
tough decisions are required. Since unilateral decision
making often leaves organizations and stakeholders
cold, CEOs need to develop a toolkit of significantly
more nimble and multidimensional leadership
capabilities and a self-awareness of when, and how,
to use them.
Deal with speed, scope, and
significance
Besides disruption, revolutions also bring opportunity,
and this revolution in particular offers the potential
to address the most critical societal issues facing our
fragile world, most notably through digital technology.
Yet there is a real danger that leaders will get lost in
the clamor of disruptive technology and the speed at
which it is changing businesses and even markets.
Our report highlights how speed is a challenge and
how it is impossible — indeed unnecessary — to
respond and react to every changing circumstance.
Winning with purpose in the Fourth
Industrial Revolution
Anewapproachtoleadershipisneededtomeetthechallengesofanincreasinglyvolatile,
complex,andhyperconnectedworld.
1 For more, see The CEO Report: Embracing the Paradoxes of
Leadership and the Power of Doubt, Heidrick Struggles and
Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. The report is available
on heidrick.com.

We argue that CEOs must instead be attuned to the
scope and significance of change. Consider the tens of
thousands of pieces of space junk that hurtle around
the Earth’s orbit. It is the job of the space station
astronauts to track the largest and most dangerous
lumps, and maneuver their craft accordingly, rather
than deal with every possible threat. The question
for leaders is: how deep and broad is the impact
of change on the organization and its stakeholders?
Is it a fundamental change, or a technological one?
CEOs must discern the most appropriate response
and remain versatile and adaptable, ready to
handle the unexpected.
Lead with purpose and mission
Succeeding in the Fourth Industrial Revolution
requires authentic leadership, building trust, and
genuine transparency — all grounded in an
abiding sense of purpose. Companies need to answer
the question, “What do we stand for?” and be free
to define themselves more broadly than simply “value
companies” or “growth companies.” Increasingly,
stakeholders expect companies to have a greater
purpose and a clear understanding of how to achieve
good in the world in ways that extend beyond the
company’s direct business activities.
This creates another paradox for leaders — how to
find a balance among the greater good, a sense
of mission, and the ability to deliver products and
services in a cost-effective, profitable way. This
paradox creates friction among meeting the
expectations of investors, satisfying the needs of
quarterly or half-year market reporting, and
the longer-term, more purpose-driven values of
the business.
Embrace ripple intelligence
Striking a balance between short-term (market)
performance and long-term, purpose-driven values
requires leaders to have a heightened ability to
anticipate complex interactions and “see around
corners.” We describe this ability as “ripple
intelligence,” a skill that leaders can develop to
get perspective and distance and essentially
fly above the clutter and noise of the day and look
down from above at the intersecting changes
affecting the business, like observing ripples on a
pond. The CEO can view the intersecting ripples
and anticipate disruption, allowing time to plan and
protect the organization against unexpected
events. Such ripples could be impending business
trends, disruptive technology, geopolitical events,
or environmental incidents. Each ripple has an
impact on decision making and how it is interpre-
ted by the CEO.
The principles of ripple intelligence also help CEOs
understand how their own ambition and idealism
(along with their conduct and performance) affects
employees, investors, consumers, and the broader
public — indeed all citizens of the interconnected
world. We continue to hear from C-suite leaders
who face pressure not only to be outstanding
leaders but also to be human, compassionate,
and approachable. Here the “power of doubt” can
be a catalyst for positive action. Self-aware CEOs
are comfortable in not knowing everything and thus
will seek opinions and consult valued advisers and
networks before making high-stakes decisions
in uncertain conditions. (For more, see “How CEOs
manage doubt,” on page 8.)
Lead with empathy and
authenticity
Through our research, we heard repeatedly about
the paradoxes that CEOs have to navigate. CEOs
must invariably use their judgment to make critical
decisions that others in an organization cannot
make. The paradox of the demands for leaders to
be authentic and empathetic and to display their
personalities, while at the same time playing the
role of the bold figurehead that people will follow
and admire, continues to be a tension. Increased
pressure on companies to do the right thing in the
world only compounds this challenge. CEOs must

have a heightened awareness of their social
responsibility and the impact they have on society’s
well-being and the environment. Leaders are
expected not only to be “real people” but also to
infuse a sense of direction, purpose, and meaning
into the organization. Employees, clients, cus-
tomers, and other stakeholders (now including
social media and bloggers) want to understand what
companies stand for. If the company’s behavior
is not coherent and beneficial to society, strident and
opposing voices become galvanized more effec-
tively than in the past. The message for CEOs: “It is
not what you say but what you do.”
Be a continuous student
In our many conversations with CEOs, we repeatedly
hear of an acute and increasing appreciation for
the widening gap between an individual’s prepara-
tion to reach the CEO’s chair and the actual
demands of “the hot seat.” In short: preparation is
never enough. Regardless of the complementary
roles that aspiring leaders may assume and the work
experiences they have along the way — nuanced
or overt — the skills needed to be CEO are different
from other roles.
To be sure, CEOs will always need to be strong
leaders in the traditional sense. Now, however, they
must also be students, continuously acquiring
experiences that are outside of their traditional
career trajectory, and they must remain open
and attentive to insights from an increasingly broad
set of information sources. The feedback from
incumbent CEOs is consistent: technical and work
experience aren’t enough; the missing skills
are often the “soft” skills. How can you handle the
dramatic increase in demand for your time?
How can you hear the signals in the noise amid the
cacophony of stakeholder voices now aimed
your way? How do you manage your own doubt
and that of others around you? How do you balance
being “commander” with the expectation you will
remain “human”? The key is to become a student of
the role and turn your curiosity into a discipline —
and a way of life.
  
Society’s expectation of companies, and leaders,
has increased dramatically in recent years. In this new,
more disruptive, and faster-paced world — where
CEOs are faced with leadership paradoxes at every
turn — leaders must constantly carve out time
to gather fresh inputs from a variety of internal and
external sources, challenge their own perspectives
and prejudices, and embrace continuous learning.
Historically, CEOs have not spent as much time chal-
lenging their business models — or themselves —
as they now must do. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is
a cauldron of opportunity and change for CEOs. How
leaders approach it will determine their own personal
success — and the future of their businesses. 
About the author
Valerie Germain (vgermain@heidrick.com) is a
partner in Heidrick Struggles’ New York office.
The author would like to thank Dave Tullett for his
contributions to this article.
Copyright © 2016 Heidrick Struggles International, Inc. All rights reserved.

The overwhelming majority of CEOs confess that
they have doubts. That’s one of the striking findings
of The CEO Report, the product of a yearlong global
research partnership between Saïd Business School
at the University of Oxford and Heidrick Struggles.
Of the more than 150 CEOs who sat down with
us for confidential, in-depth interviews, 71% not only
admit to doubt but also embrace it as a basis for
better decisions.
“If you don’t doubt yourself in a constructive, positive
way,” said one participant, “you are borderline danger-
ous for your company.”
Doubt is a challenge of both knowledge and emotion.
Knowledge can fall anywhere on a continuum from
full not knowing to full knowledge. Feelings of doubt
can fall anywhere between anxiety and fearlessness.
How much knowledge do you have when you face a
difficult decision? How anxious do you feel? How
might you use your uncertainty as a tool?
Thinking about doubt along these two dimen-
sions, with their four possible combinations (see
figure), provides a systematic way for CEOs and
other leaders to manage doubt and even use it as
a competitive advantage.
How CEOs manage doubt
Real CEOs exude confidence. Radiate certainty. Act decisively. Or so popular
mythology has it.
Figure: Harnessing doubt to improve decision making
How can senior executives
distinguish constructive doubt from
disruptive second-guessing?
Start by acknowledging that doubt
is a challenge of both feeling
and knowing. Viewing doubt along
these two dimensions is revealing.
Fearlessness
Anxiety
Knowing
Not
knowing
Preparation
Manage doubt by:
Risk management
Challenge
Manage doubt by:
Diversity of thought
Awareness
Manage doubt by:
Continual learning
Validation
Manage doubt by:
Mentoring/benchmarking
Myopia
Angst
Hubris
Paralysis
Source: Heidrick Struggles

Low knowledge/no fear. This is perhaps the most
dangerous combination of all. The risk is hubris —
charging blindly ahead, despite what you don’t
know. The remedy is preparation. The means, say
the CEOs we spoke with, lie in risk management
to increase the odds that what you don’t know won’t
hurt you. Techniques can include scenario plan-
ning, including worst-case scenarios; long-term
planning; contingency planning; and more. The goal,
as in all instances of doubt, is to find a comfort
zone in which you can act decisively despite not
having full knowledge.
High knowledge/no fear. Of all the possibilities, this
one would seem to entail the least doubt. Even
so, there remains the risk of myopia — the chance
that a false sense of security has led you to over-
look other important choices. The remedy is challenge.
Diversity of thought provides the means to get
there. As one CEO put it, “One of the most important
things is having people around you that tell you
how wrong you are.” You can seek diverse points of
view from your management team, your board, and
a wide variety of other people inside and outside the
company. You can also use techniques such as war
gaming or a devil’s advocate to surface contrary views,
and you can foster a culture of constructive dissent.
High knowledge/high anxiety. The risk here is angst —
not just another word for anxiety but a deep-
seated fear that could prevent you from pursuing
a course of action you are convinced is right. The
remedy lies in validation. You can seek it from mentors
and the board, from other internal sounding boards,
and through benchmarking. And if you don’t
get validation, you can at least learn that your fear
was justified.
Low knowledge/high anxiety. This is the worst of
both worlds and the condition likely to generate maxi-
mum doubt. The risk is paralysis — an unaffordable
risk when a decision must be made despite the state
of your knowledge or your emotions. The remedy
is awareness, encompassing the cognitive and the
emotional. You can constructively harness doubt in
this situation through continual learning, including
wide and deep reading, data collection, expert advice,
and conversations with a wide variety of people
about both dimensions of your doubt.
Understanding the risks and remedies for doubt
enables leaders to mitigate their discomfort, whether
its source is cognitive or emotional, and return to a
zone where they can make more productive and well-
considered choices, turning doubt into a powerful
decision tool.
But what of the nearly 30% of CEOs who were reluctant
to admit that managing doubt was a part of their
job? Are 3 out of 10 companies led by chief executives
who rarely have second thoughts? Probably not.
In fact, around 10% of the interviewees who denied
having any doubts went on to describe how they
reduce uncertainty and gain clarity — in other words,
reduce doubt. Like their peers who approach doubt
more consciously and systematically, they recognize
that certainty can be not only an illusion but also
a dangerous one. 
About the author
Bonnie Gwin (bgwin@heidrick.com) is a vice
chairman and co-managing partner of Heidrick
Struggles’ CEO Board of Directors Practice.
She is based in the New York office.
This article is adapted from The CEO Report. For
more about the research, contact Valerie Germain
(vgermain@heidrick.com) and Karen Rosa West
(kwest@heidrick.com).

The importance of culture and its effects on
organizational performance should by now be well
known. Yet even as issues of organizational culture
lie at the heart of merger clashes, strategy failures,
and change initiatives, too many senior executives
approach organizational culture as they might the
weather: everyone talks about it as if there’s
nothing that can be done about it.
Against this backdrop, it’s useful to remind leaders
of the influence they can and do exert on the
cultures of their organizations — for good or ill. In
this excerpt from their seminal book, Winning
Teams–Winning Cultures, Senn Delaney Chairman
Larry Senn and President and CEO Jim Hart describe
the concept of the “The Shadow of the Leader”
and contend that only when the top team lives and
breathes the changes it wants and expects from its
organization will such changes succeed — and stick.
A few years ago, a CEO asked us if we could help shift
one aspect of his company’s culture. It was a strong
culture in many ways. They had high performance
expectations, committed hard-working employees,
good basic values, and fairly good performance. He
felt they could go from good to great if they could
collaborate better across the organization and get
more synergies from the different business units.
As we started the cultural diagnostics, it became
clear that they had turf issues between corporate and
business units and between different functions.
While the CEO wanted us to help “fix” the organiza-
tion, it didn’t take long to see that the issues were
largely a reflection of the senior team members. They
were not fully aligned or mutually supportive. They
didn’t speak with one voice to the organization.
They were generally polite and non-confrontational,
but they had a habit of appearing to agree on a
decision in a meeting but then not supporting the
decision outside the meeting. As we dug deeper,
we found that many of the same behaviors existed
at the second level of leadership in the teams that
reported to senior team members. We asked people
at lower levels in the organization why they didn’t
collaborate better, and they said in various ways, “Why
should we? Our bosses don’t.”
Lack of collaboration is only one cultural trait
impacted by the shadow of the leaders. You could
substitute many things, including: blaming,
stress, lack of coaching, resistance to change, hectic,
hierarchical, risk-averse, and so on.
The central finding is that, over time, organizations
tend to take on the characteristics of their leaders.
This was easy to see in the field studies that were
conducted of smaller firms. The values, habits, and
biases of the founders and dominant leaders left
an imprint on the organization. It’s clearly visible in
companies such as Wal-Mart, where Sam Walton
had such a distinct impact on the culture. The impact
Herb Kelleher had on Southwest Airlines is also
apparent. The same is true in all organizations, at least
from a historical perspective. There are often “ghosts”
of past leaders evident. To better understand that,
just ask about the values and preferences of dominant
founders of a company or early leaders who left
their mark. Chances are you can still see at least rem-
nants that have made an impact many years later.
What leadership shadow do you cast?
“A leader doesn’t just get the message across; he is the message.”
—warren bennis

Because of the size and complexity of organizations
today, the most important shadows come from teams
at the top; specifically, the CEO’s team and the teams
of those who report to the CEO. Therefore, if you want
to shape any element of your culture, your teams
need to model the desired behavior.
The shadow phenomenon
The shadow phenomenon exists for anyone who is a
leader of any group, including a parent in a family. That
is because people tend to take on the characteristics
of those who have power or influence over them.
One of the most intimate and far-reaching examples
of this shadow concept happens when parents,
perhaps aware of their own imperfections, exhort
their children to “Do as I say, not as I do.” Unfor-
tunately, children generally tune out that message
and mimic the behaviors they see. The message
of any parent, or business leader, will be drowned
out if the actions conflict with the words.
The role of the leader, at work and at home, requires
modeling the desired behavior and letting others
see the desired values in action. To become effective
leaders, we must become aware of our shadows
and then learn to have our actions match our message.
A former CEO of one Fortune 500 company felt so
strongly about the importance of consistency
between actions and words, he once said: “I would
submit to you that it is unnatural for you to come
in late and for your people to come in early. I think it is
unnatural for you to be dishonest and your people
to be honest. I think it is unnatural for you to not
handle your finances well and then to expect your
people to handle theirs well. In all these simple things,
I think you have to set the standard.”1
The head of an organization or a team casts a shadow
that influences the employees in that group. The
shadow may be weak or powerful, yet it always exists.
It is a reflection of everything the leader does and says.
An example of the “shadow impact”
We learned a real-life lesson about the shadow of
leaders early in the history of Senn Delaney. J.L. Hudson,
a division of one of the top U.S. department store
companies, Dayton Hudson Corporation in Detroit
(now Target Corporation), asked us to help them
work on improving customer service, with the goal
of becoming more like the high-end department
store Nordstrom. We piloted the process in six stores,
working with the store managers, with mixed success.
Some stores had measurable increases in service
levels and increased market share, while others didn’t.
In fact, the results were almost directly proportional
to our success in shifting the store manager’s focus
from operations to service and his or her manage-
ment style. It demonstrated how the leader’s shadow
of influence crossed the store. This is what we would
later term “The Shadow of the Leader.”
We concluded that our mixed success was a result of
starting to shape cultures at the wrong level in the
organization. We discovered this in an interesting way.
When we asked sales associates why they weren’t
more attentive or friendlier to customers, they would
ask (in different ways), “Who’s friendly and atten-
tive to me?” When we would ask their department
managers the same question, we got the same
answer. That continued on up through the assistant
store manager, the store manager, the district
manager, the vice president of stores, and on up to
the executive committee. We concluded that
fixing the stores was similar to family therapy; you
have to include the parents.
Soon after, the CEO of The Broadway Department
Stores in California, later known as Federated
Department Stores, Inc. (now Macy’s), asked if we
would develop a customer service process for
them. We politely said, “Only if we can begin with the
1 See Lynne Joy McFarland, Larry E. Senn, and John R. Childress,
21st Century Leadership: Dialogues with 100 Top Leaders, Executive
Excellence Publishing, 1994, page 151.

executive committee.” That led to several con-
secutive years of increased sales and market share for
The Broadway.
All too often, leaders approve training programs
dealing with issues such as leadership development
or culture shaping but don’t attend them as
participants or visibly work on the concepts them-
selves. More often than not, as a result, these
programs are unsuccessful. That is why it is critical
that any major change initiative start at the top.
Cultural implications
One of the most common complaints throughout
organizations is that the senior team is not “walking
the talk.” Whenever a company begins to make
statements about desired behaviors and people don’t
see those behaviors being modeled at the top,
there is a lack of integrity. This can take various forms:
• The organization is asking people to be
more open to change, yet the top leaders do
not exhibit changed behaviors.
• Increased teamwork and cross-organizational
collaboration is preached, yet the senior team
does not collaborate across divisional lines.
• The organization is seen cutting back on
expenses, yet the senior team doesn’t change
any of its special perks.
• People are asked to be accountable for results,
while the senior team members continue
to subtly blame one another for lack of results.
We have found that the fastest way to create a
positive self-fulfilling prophecy about cultural change
is to have the top leaders individually and collec-
tively shift their own behaviors. They don’t have to
be perfect; they just have to deal themselves into
the same game they are asking others to play. When
leadership, team-building, and culture-shaping
training are a part of the change process, the senior
team should be the first team to take part.
Anyone who has ever conducted training processes
with middle management knows the limitations of
starting at this level. When attendees are asked about
the value of the session, the classic responses are,
“My boss is the one who should be attending,” or “It
sounds great, but that’s not the way it is around
here; just look at my manager.”
Because of the critical need for the senior team to
role-model the new culture, it is the group that
first needs to come together to define the guiding
behaviors for the rest of the organization. When-
ever this is delegated to a committee under the senior
team, or to expert writers, the statements of values
may read well but are not owned by and don’t reside
in the hearts of the senior team members. When
the values don’t live in the senior team, the probability
that the organization will live the values is low.
As a firm that specializes in culture shaping, Senn
Delaney has an unwritten policy that we won’t
design or conduct a culture-shaping architecture for
clients unless we can first work with the team that
leads the organization, or a major semi-autonomous
group, and its leader. It’s not that we don’t want the
business; it’s just that we know that without a positive
leadership shadow, the process is unlikely to work.
In order to build a winning culture, the top teams
must be seen by the organization as living the
values and walking the talk. Based on the size of the
organization, it is usually the top 100 to 500 people
that really set the culture. 
About the authors
Jim Hart (jhart@senndelaney.com) is president and
CEO of the culture-shaping firm Senn Delaney, a
Heidrick Struggles company. Larry Senn (lsenn
@senndelaney.com) is chairman and founder
of Senn Delaney. Both are based in the Huntington
Beach office.

Why do some business leaders thrive while others
flounder? Professional qualifications and tech-
nical competencies (the whats of leadership) play
an important role, of course, but far more often
we’ve observed that success or failure depends on
how leaders lead — specifically, how leaders’
styles mesh with their teams and the cultures of
their organizations.
An empirical research project we conducted to better
understand these dynamics, and the behavioral
patterns that underpin them, identified eight leader-
ship styles, or archetypes. Taken together, they
suggest implications for senior executives looking to
better understand — and improve — their leader-
ship skills, for teams seeking to improve their dynamics,
and for organizations striving to improve the overall
effectiveness of their leaders.
What we did
To better understand how leaders lead and what
contributes to effective leadership, we created
a psychometric survey to measure three interrelated
facets of leadership that our experience suggests
are important differentiators. Specifically, we wanted
to see to what degree leaders possessed 1) a “thriving
mind-set”1 (including a clear sense of purpose,
deep commitment to learning, and conveyed sense
of optimism); 2) a combination of social, self, and
situational awareness; and 3) essential leadership
values such as a performance orientation, ethical
integrity, ability to collaborate, and openness to
change, among others.
The survey included 1,006 largely US-based executives
of director level and above at companies with 250
or more employees. The respondents represented a
broad range of industries and functions. Impor-
tantly, our survey questions were designed to high-
light the ambiguity and fluidity of the kinds of
real-life situations that senior executives face. We
did this by asking respondents to rate themselves
on a continuum between sets of opposing, yet equally
“right,” choices (for example, “I prefer a changing
environment” versus “I prefer a stable environment,”
or “I love to win” versus “I hate to lose”). Factor
analysis allowed us to isolate the dozen or so survey
questions (from the original 72) that together
accounted for the vast majority of the variance we
observed in the responses.
What we learned
When we looked at the patterns in the data and
conducted further statistical analyses on them, includ-
ing cluster analysis, we discovered something
interesting: eight statistically distinct leadership styles
distributed among respondents (see figure). More-
over, while the characteristics of each signature style,
or archetype, were quantitatively unique, they
also resonated deeply with our own experience of
conducting executive assessments. In short, we
all know leaders like these — and the strengths and
weaknesses they exhibit are at once intuitively
recognizable and instructive.
What it means for leaders
It’s important to note that there is no such thing
as a “right” or “wrong” leadership style, and in fact
individuals are likely to have access to every style
What’s your leadership signature?
Research into leadership behavior identifies eight archetypes that can help senior executives
better understand their strengths, weaknesses, and blind spots.
1 For more, see Carol S. Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology
of Success, Ballantine Books, 2007; and “How companies
can profit from a ‘growth mindset,’” Harvard Business Review,
November 2014.

to a varying degree. That said, our experience
and this research both suggest that leaders are likely
to gravitate to a much smaller set of default styles
they find comfortable or familiar — and particularly
so when they are under stress or aren’t consciously
managing the impressions they leave on others.
What might this mean for leaders? For senior
executives, recognizing their “go-to” style or styles
could help them better understand and articulate
the focus of their leadership (be it relationships, ideas,
problem solving, execution, and so on) and thus
better play to their strengths when leading teams or
operating in complex environments. Moreover, it
can help individuals understand the other leadership
styles to which they have access, thus potentially
broadening the range of situations and environments
where they might be successful.
It could also help leaders recognize potential pitfalls
and areas for heightened vigilance. For example, a
“collaborator” whose empathetic, consensus-driven
style is a strength when interacting with his or
her C-suite peers could find it ineffective (or even
counterproductive) when interacting with sub-
ordinates who crave clarity and direction. Similarly, a
learning-oriented “forecaster” who uses his or her
ability to gather information and think conceptually
to help generate great ideas may not consider
formulating a deeper buy-in strategy that appeals to
people’s hearts as well as their heads.
Figure: The eight archetypes of leadership
To learn more about the leadership styles and to use an interactive tool to assess your own style, see our article
in Harvard Business Review titled “Assessment: What’s Your Leadership Style?” at hbr.org. The assessment
provides immediate feedback about your style — potential strengths, weaknesses, and blind spots — and
pinpoints the settings where you’ll be most and least effective.
Collaborator
Empathetic, team-building, talent-spotting,
coaching oriented
Energizer
Charismatic, inspiring, connects emotionally,
provides meaning
Pilot
Strategic, visionary, adroit at managing complexity, open
to input, team oriented
Provider
Action oriented, confident in own path or methodology,
loyal to colleagues, driven to provide for others
Harmonizer
Reliable, quality driven, execution focused, creates
positive and stable environments, inspires loyalty
Forecaster
Learning oriented, deeply knowledgeable, visionary,
cautious in decision making
Producer
Task focused, results oriented, linear thinker,
loyal to tradition
Composer
Independent, creative, problem-solving, decisive,
self-reliant

Similarly, a better understanding of the archetypes
and how they interact with one another could
help inform the talent management approaches
taken by companies, including:
• Understanding how leaders are likely to react
to and deal with ambiguity
• Identifying situations and contexts in which
up-and-coming leaders are likely to be most
successful and where they may find their
leadership skills stretched
• Seeking to understand — and balance — team
leadership dynamics in order to align leader-
ship styles with organizational objectives (for
example, leading a change initiative)
While our research into these leadership archetypes
is in its early stages, some things are already quite
clear. Human motivations and behaviors are complex,
and therefore any model attempting to explain
them (including this one) will always have limited
power as a predictive tool. Moreover, change is
constant as leaders evolve throughout their careers
and accumulate experience. Nonetheless, by develop-
ing an enhanced understanding of how leaders
behave and interact with one another, we might better
seek to harness that ability to change in service of
expanding leadership potential. 
About the authors
Brian Reger (breger@senndelaney.com) is a senior
vice president of the culture-shaping firm Senn
Delaney, a Heidrick Struggles company; he is based
in the Huntington Beach office. Elliott Stixrud
(estixrud@heidrick.com) is an associate in Heidrick
Struggles’ Chicago office, where Karen Rosa West
(kwest@heidrick.com) is a partner in the Leadership
Consulting Practice.

Speed and stability:
A winning
dynamic for teams
t h e t e a m
17
Accelerating performance
in teams
24
Five steps to better team
performance
27
Can your leaders deliver on
your growth strategy?

The ability of an organization to accelerate its
performance — in other words, to build and change
momentum to get results more quickly than its
competitors — is critically dependent on its teams
at every level. Most organizations, however, fail
to sufficiently consider the performance of teams
when seeking performance improvements overall.
Indeed, the vast majority of management research
on organizations focuses on either the whole
organism or the individual leader; the team is forgot-
ten. And yet teams innately tend toward chaos:
personalities work at odds, purpose is muddled, and
success factors are vaguely defined. When a team
is dysfunctional, its energy dissipates, tensions build
up, and fatigue sets in — costing the organization
time, money, and talent.
After forensically studying data on the dynamics and
performance of more than 2,000 teams, we have
uncovered both bad and good news. The bad news
is that most teams are below par and therefore
suffer in their ability to build and change momentum
quickly. Senior executive teams are especially
poor at this. But on the upside, the energy that can be
released by improving a team’s ability to accelerate
performance is enormous. Taking bonus payments
as a proxy for corporate performance, our research
finds that high-achieving teams enjoy a 23% boost in
performance compared with underachieving teams.
Moreover, we find that high-achieving teams reduce
costs more quickly, go to market more effectively,
and launch products more smoothly.
In this article we explore how high-performing
teams get (and stay) that way. First, we present the
results of our research on teams from a range of
organizations, functions, and geographies. Then, we
examine trends among both high-performing
and underachieving teams. Last, and most important,
we offer targeted recommendations for how to
improve team performance throughout the organi-
zation and achieve performance breakthroughs —
and achieve them faster than the competition.
Understanding acceleration
Our work focused on closing the gap in our collective
knowledge about teams. We analyzed data from a
significantly larger sample of teams than completed
by researchers to date — 2,000 teams across a wide
number of organizations, functions, and geographies,
in industries as diverse as banking, private equity,
insurance, engineering, telecommunications, health-
care, and charitable institutions. We measured a
team’s ability to achieve performance outcomes more
quickly than others, through the application of
a proprietary questionnaire — the Team Accelerator
Questionnaire (TAQ) — a tool with robust statistical
reliability and validity (for more, see sidebar, “The
15 tests of brilliant teams,” on page 22).
Scores were calculated based on the number of
respondent groups who rated the team an average
of at least 3.8 on a 5-point scale across the TAQ.
A team is considered:
• Accelerating when all four respondent
groups — team members, team leaders, com-
missioners (that is, the bosses of the team
leaders), and outside stakeholders — score
above 3.8
• Moving when three respondent groups score
above 3.8
Accelerating performance in teams
High-achieving teams enjoy a significant boost in performance over underachieving teams.
Here’s how they do it.

• Coasting when two respondent groups score
above 3.8
• Lagging when only one respondent group
scores above 3.8
• Derailing if none of the respondent groups
scores above 3.8
Room for improvement
True to our prediction that high performance is not
a natural state, only 13% of the teams we studied
were accelerating, whereas almost 30% were lagging
or outright derailing (Figure 1).
In a departure from previous academic research, we
found that a commonly cited culprit — team
size — actually has little to do with a team’s ability
to accelerate performance. In the teams we
studied, there was no difference in the mean ratings
on TAQ scores whether those teams were small
(3–7 members), midsize (8–12 members), or large
(13 or more members). What matters is what teams do
and how they behave, whatever their size. Our
view is not that a high-performing, accelerating team
does completely different things than a lagging
team. Instead, our findings suggest that an accelerat-
ing team simply gets things done faster and
more effectively.
All teams — regardless of their ability to accelerate
performance — set objectives, create a vision, and
get rid of poor-performing people. However, the core
difference is that an accelerating team does all its
work quickly and effectively, whereas a lagging team
does its work more slowly and poorly. What’s at stake?
Using corporate bonuses as a proxy for economic
performance, we determined that accelerating teams,
on average, had an economic impact that was 22.8%
higher than the impact achieved by derailing teams
(Figure 2).
Figure 1: Distribution of team performance
0
300
100
200
400
350
250
150
50
n = 1,118
Number of teams
Derailing Lagging Coasting Moving Accelerating

• Operates in a high-challenge, high-
support mode
• Focuses on both performance and acceleration
The results of the TAQ reveal several elements and
constraints that adversely affect team acceleration
or the measurement of it. Several lessons can be drawn
from the research and applied to team building
in organizations of every sector, industry, functional
specialty, and place in the corporate hierarchy.
Focus at the top
Senior teams tend to be the least likely to be
categorized as accelerating among all teams in the
organization. Indeed, junior teams were 1.6 times
more likely to be accelerating than were teams com-
posed of director-level members and above. In
addition, we found that senior teams rate their team
lower on 13 of the 15 tests of brilliant teams than
do the members of junior teams. This finding aligns
Our research also found that, on average, 67% of
accelerating teams are high performers, compared
with only 41% of derailing teams that are.
When we observe an accelerating team in an
organization, we are witnessing a team that builds on
each member’s energies and talents, gener-
ating synergy to deliver a shared purpose. We can
recognize the team as accelerating because it:
• Mobilizes, executes, and transforms better —
and faster — than its competitors
• Creates a shared agenda that produces
competitive advantage
• Executes with a metabolic rate that drives
outstanding levels of achievement
• Transforms continuously, setting stretching
objectives and building improvement
capabilities that outpace others
• Has high levels of trust and productive conflict
Figure 2: Distribution of bonuses for “accelerating”and“derailing”teams
Number of teams
0 0.2 1.00.4 0.6 0.8 1.2 1.4 2.21.6 1.8 2.0 3.02.4 2.6 2.8
High-performance threshold
Bonus matrix mean
22.8% increase
Accelerating teamsDerailing teams

to accelerate its performance. Teams that have their
purpose for existence “in their faces” — that is,
customer-facing teams — are 1.4 times more likely
to be an accelerating team and 1.3 times more
likely to be within reach of this goal compared with
internally focused teams. In addition, customer-facing
teams score significantly higher on 14 of the 15 tests
of brilliant teams than do non–customer-facing teams.
The bottom line: Connecting with customers is
important for team acceleration. For non–customer-
facing teams, the story becomes familiar: shared
purpose, foresight, and unique commission are what
make the difference. Added to this mix is a focused
grip on the work they set their organization to
do. Concentrating on these areas will help to make a
real impact on the performance of non–customer-
facing teams.
Hold up a mirror
All team members tend to suffer from self-delusion,
according to our research. Compared with the
other three respondent groups — team leaders,
commissioners (that is, the bosses of the team
leaders), and outside stakeholders — team members
tend to have a rosier view of their team accelera-
tion and rate the team highest on 10 of the 15 tests
of brilliant teams.
This discrepancy between perspective and reality can
be ascribed to a concept described in social
psychology as the fundamental attribution error —
the tendency to emphasize personality rather
than external factors to explain behavior. For example,
if you play 100 games of tennis against somebody
who is equally as talented at tennis, you would each
expect to win 50 games and lose 50 games. What’s
fascinating, though, is that when that happens, people
believe that they won 50 games because of bril-
liance and talent and skill, and they believe that they
lost the other 50 games because of bad luck or
even because their opponent cheated. In other words,
with previous Heidrick Struggles research; in a
survey of 60 top human resources executives from
Fortune 500 companies, only 6% of respondents
reported that “the executives in our C-suite are a well-
integrated team.”1
Why is it worse at the top? While junior teams are
generally organized by geography, department,
or product line, teams at the top of the organization
are, by definition, doing quite different things: one
person runs marketing, another runs manufacturing,
another runs finance, and so forth. At the senior
level, the challenge is to integrate a portfolio of activi-
ties into a coherent whole, and we think the
explanation behind the data is that too much of the
energy at this level is consumed in dealing with
ego problems driven by instincts for self-protection:
“I want more power than you,” or “I will agree with
your proposal only if you agree with my proposal,” or
“I’ll stay off your turf if you stay off mine.” Further-
more, senior team members have invested a lot in
their careers by the time they’ve risen to the top
of an organization, and by virtue of being visible and
exposed, they are vulnerable. If they fail, they have
a much longer way to fall. Those factors exacerbate
the ego problem.
The bottom line: Just when the responsibility and
impact of teams become most critical — when the
team is operating at the most senior level — these
teams are the least likely to have the ability to quickly
build and change momentum to perform. Thus
organizations must make their most senior teams the
top priority. The upside of this finding is the sheer
scale of opportunity for organizations to train and
coach their senior teams to improve.
Connect with customers
Our research shows that the further a team is away
from the customer, the harder that team must work
1 Richard M. Rosen and Fred Adair, “CEOs Misperceive Top Teams’
Performance,” Harvard Business Review, September 2007.

we tend to ascribe good qualities to ourselves
while rationalizing our bad qualities away — or being
ignorant of them entirely.
Fundamental attribution error likely explains why the
team members in our research — so far, with no
exceptions — are more positive about their own team
than is everybody else. The team members are
not lying; they genuinely believe what they are saying.
But they’re nonetheless wrong. So if you talk only
to your team members about how good your team is,
expect a deluded and inaccurate point of view.
The bottom line: Involve multiple outsiders in
your evaluation of team performance — not just team
members but also the team leader, the manager
of the team leader, and the stakeholders. The stake-
holders’ views are especially critical because they
will decide whether they support the team’s actions,
allocate it an adequate budget, and open doors —
or not.
Question optimism
Along the same lines of team members fooling them-
selves into a rosier view, we found that every team —
regardless of its ability to accelerate performance —
thinks it will be better in the future. However, the
accelerating teams predict only a small improvement,
while the teams that are derailing predict an
enormous improvement. This is known as the opti-
mism bias, which describes how most of us have
an unrealistically positive view about the future. It is
important to question this optimism because,
without intervention, these teams are unlikely to
achieve their performance ambitions.
The bottom line: We urge senior executives to
be cautious in uncritically accepting rosy predictions
of the future. When your organization’s teams
predict their future level of performance, apply a
healthy discount to that estimate, because
half of those evaluations are based on inherent,
excessive optimism.
The prescription: Tailor your
approach to team building
Consider two elite athletes. One is a 125-pound female
table tennis player who is quick as lightning and
can run around the table in half a second. The other
is a 200-pound male heavyweight boxer. They’re
both healthy and incredibly skilled. However, their
pattern of acceleration — how they build and change
momentum to perform — is completely different,
requiring different strategies, muscles, and reflexes.
If the table tennis player gets in the boxing ring, she
risks injury, and if the boxer competes in table tennis,
he will likely be beaten. Athletes need to be more
than just healthy; their pattern of acceleration must
be appropriate to the task at hand.
All 15 of the TAQ tests are foundational for accelerating
teams; however, it pays for teams with different
starting points to focus on different tests. We looked
at the average scores of the 15 tests of brilliant teams
across all respondent groups and found the following:
A team that wants to improve its ability to accelerate
performance may find it helpful to focus on:
• Aligning the team around a shared purpose,
as a team that collectively increases its shared
purpose score by one point has a 6.9 times
greater chance of being an accelerating team
• Building stakeholder influence by connecting
team members to all the different constituencies
with which the team interacts. This can lead
to a 3 times greater chance of being an
accelerating team
Teams that are either lagging or derailing may find it
helpful to focus on:
• Unique commission (a clear understanding of
stakeholder expectations), as increasing this
score by one point brings about a 6.7 times lower
chance of derailing
• Defining what the future plan is to deliver, as
increasing the foresight score by one point
translates to a 7.7 times lower chance of derailing

The 15 tests of brilliant teams
According to the results of our Team Accelerator Questionnaire (TAQ), teams that operate at peak performance are strong in five distinct areas:
Mandate
A team has a clear mandate if it meets three criteria:
Unique commission: The team has a deep and shared understand-
ing of the expectations of its stakeholders.
Shared purpose: Team members are mutually accountable for,
and collectively committed to, a shared purpose. Focusing on work
only the team can do, the team members leverage their unique
position as integrators.
Coherent direction: Both the vision and the strategy are aligned,
tightly integrated, and clearly articulated.
Governance
A team has strong governance if it meets three criteria:
Tight composition: The team contains the right “fact holders”
with the right skills and mix of perspectives, while avoiding the
burden of excessive size.
Aligned incentives: The team is incentivized to deliver its strategy,
achieve targeted outcomes, and role-model behaviors, balancing
collective and individual accountability.
Agile processes: The team interacts flexibly with effective cadence
and with clear individual and collective decision rights.
Behavior
Team behavior supports acceleration if it meets three criteria:
Distributed leadership: The team leader operates as a “first among
equals,” leveraging the full capabilities of the team.
Productive conflict: Empathy trumps ego, and the team is able to
rupture and repair, support and challenge.
Explicit standards: Team members support each other when it
counts, and the foundations of respect, disclosure, and directness
are in place. They role-model this behavior for the organization.
Connections
A team creates strong connections if it meets three criteria:
Compelling story: The team translates its strategy into a compelling
story and uses it to powerfully engage target audiences.
Focused grip: The team follows through and drives for impact,
commissioning work that results in competitive advantage.
Stakeholder influence: The team actively considers, then consciously
shapes, the wider context in which it operates by managing key
relationships.
Renewal
A team capable of continuous renewal meets three criteria:
Foresight: The team has sufficient focus on the future and
avoids shortsightedness.
Learning: The team takes time to reflect and learn, drawing
on external and varied perspectives and translating them into
productive improvement.
Energy: The team works in a way that creates rather than saps energy.
It channels the energy of the organization in pursuit of accelerated
performance.

• Communicating key messages powerfully across
the organization, as increasing the compelling
story score by one point leads to a 3 times lower
chance of derailing
Furthermore, our research found that the top four
constraints (for more, see “What’s slowing you down?”
on page 48) that thwart accelerated performance
relate to purpose. Struggling teams would be wise to
focus on tackling these areas first:
• Allowing too many priorities to pull the team
in competing directions
• Becoming mired in “troubleshooting” mode
and focusing only on today’s problems
• Finding it difficult to integrate the different
portfolios of each team member into a
coherent purpose
• A tension between the team’s priorities and
the expectations of its stakeholders
  
The potential benefit of improving team acceleration
is huge. Our research reveals several clear action
items: team building must begin at the top, adapt for
customer-facing and non–customer-facing teams,
and question the team’s optimism for both current and
future performance. Executives who take a hard
look at their teams through the lens of the 15 tests of
brilliant teams will be well positioned to improve
the acceleration of their teams and increase their odds
of achieving breakthrough performance gains faster
than their competitors. 
About the authors
Colin Price (cprice@heidrick.com) is executive vice
president and managing partner of Heidrick
Struggles’ Leadership Consulting Practice. Sharon
Toye (stoye@heidrick.com) is a partner in the
Leadership Consulting Practice. Both are based in the
London office.

Our research into team performance (see “Accelerating performance in teams,” on page 17) finds that
teams operating at their best have a clear mandate, demonstrate strong governance, distribute their leadership,
engage in productive conflict, translate their strategy into a compelling story, manage key stakeholder
relationships well, and are capable of continuous renewal.
The result? They are more healthy and thus more able to build and change momentum to get results
more quickly than their competitors — in other words, to achieve accelerated performance. The following figures
highlight the approach that teams can take to get there.
Five steps to better team performance
The following figures explore how top teams accelerate performance to achieve enduring
competitive advantage.
Focus at the top
Senior teams are less able to build and change
momentum quickly than are junior teams —
just as the responsibility and impact of doing so
become more critical. Start here.
Connect with customers
Encouraging teams that are not customer facing
to spend time connecting with customers may
increase the team’s ability to accelerate performance.
Source: Heidrick Struggles analysis
n = 845
% of teams
Derailing
Lagging
Coasting
Moving
Accelerating
Below director level
Director level and above
6.0
11.6
18.7
21.5
30.7
34.4
30.0
23.5
14.6
9.0
n = 1,118
% of teams
Derailing
Lagging
Coasting
Moving
Accelerating
Not customer facing
Customer influencing
Customer facing
8.4
7.4
19.7
16.6
33.3
30.1
25.3
30.7
13.3
15.3
5.2
16.3
25.0
36.6
16.9

Hold up a mirror
Gathering an outside-in view of the team is critical to ensuring teams meet the needs of their stakeholders,
as stakeholders view teams differently than the team sees itself.
Mean score on Team Accelerator Questionnaire: performance ratings on 5-point scale, by criteria category (for more, see page 22)
n = 662–670
Team member
Stakeholder
Foresight
Coherent direction
0 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5
Compelling story
Aligned incentives
Stakeholder influence
Focused grip
Unique commission
Shared purpose
Tight composition
Agile processes
Distributed leadership
Productive conflict
Learning
Energy
Explicit standards

Question optimism
While both accelerating and derailing teams tend to rate their current performance in line with the performance
data, the teams that are lagging the most (or derailing outright) tend to be the most optimistic in their
predictions of future performance. So when your organization’s teams predict their future level of performance,
apply a healthy discount to that estimate.
n = 260
Performance ratings on 5-point scale
Current overall performance rating
XX Future performance predictionXX
2.9
3.7
3.0
3.7
3.3
3.8
3.5
4.0
3.7
3.8
About the authors
Colin Price (cprice@heidrick.com) is executive vice president and managing partner of Heidrick Struggles’
Leadership Consulting Practice; he is based in the London office. Carolyn Vavrek (cvavrek@heidrick.com)
is regional practice managing partner of the Leadership Consulting Practice in the Americas; she is based in the
San Francisco office.
Start with purpose
The top four constraints — what gets in the way of high-performing, accelerating teams — relate to purpose;
therefore, spending time on clarifying a team’s purpose is time well spent.
0
45
25
35
60
50
65
55
40
30
20
% of teams experiencing given constraint
Too many priorities Stuck in“troubleshooting”mode Lack of coherent purpose Tension between priorities and expectations
Source for all figures: Heidrick Struggles analysis

Against a backdrop of volatile, uncertain times and
increased business complexity, it is useful for business
leaders to remind themselves of one essential fact:
any strategy imposed on an unprepared or unwilling
organization is doomed to fail. Persuasive and
charismatic leaders may succeed in driving a strategy
that achieves a turnaround. But unless that change
is embedded in the fabric of the business, it will
not last.
A chief executive may articulate a vision and then
set about ensuring that everyone is “on the bus,”
only to find the wheels falling off before the strategy
can proceed too far down the road. The key to such
failures is not necessarily the value proposition — or,
more accurately, the value hypothesis — put forward
by a CEO or a board of directors, but rather the
value delivery.
For the past two years, we have partnered with
Professor Andrew Kakabadse, of Henley Business
School in the United Kingdom, on a global study
taking in 100 face-to-face interviews with chairmen,
directors, chief executives, and senior executives
to test business models against current realities. With
the data collected from the survey, and insights
drawn from Professor Kakabadse’s leadership research,
we looked at how to create diverse teams to foster
innovation, ways of facilitating diversity of thinking,
how to align culture with strategy, and how to engage
teams and organizations to deliver on a mission.
We found that the starting point for many companies
is bleak. In looking at many of the world’s leading
Can your leaders deliver on your
growth strategy?
Seven management disciplines can help top teams (and companies) foster innovation,
align culture with strategy, and improve performance.
1
organizations, through two years of interviews, and
working from a database collected over 20 years
from 5,500 boards and top teams in 34 countries, we
observed that in terms of strategic alignment, fully
33% of top teams do not pull together at all. Not only
is there little sharing of mission, vision, and strategy,
but many large businesses undermine themselves.
Leadership teams, managers, and boards are fighting
each other.
High-performing teams, by contrast, do things quite
differently. This article summarizes the methodol-
ogy followed by leadership teams in high-performing
companies, as outlined in Kakabadse’s book The
Success Formula: How Smart Leaders Deliver Outstanding
Value (Bloomsbury, 2015) and explores the seven disci-
plines required to succeed in volatile times. Taken
together, they suggest ways that ordinary teams
(and indeed companies) might become extraordinary
and offer useful food for thought for CEOs and
board chairs facing the difficult task of aligning and
engaging their organizations to get there.
Evidence
One of the most famous success stories in global
banking in recent years was the takeover by a small
regional bank in Britain, the Royal Bank of Scotland,
of a bank three times its size, NatWest Bank. It was an
audacious move and one driven by a singular
personality who was later discredited because he
tried to repeat the process and failed. Why? He
lacked evidence. This leader was driven by intuition,
not data.

2
Leaders who get sustainable results are not the ones
who are able to see things very quickly, or pull off a
business coup once or twice, but those who are able
to succeed over time because they have created a
culture of evidence.
Business history is replete with examples of CEOs who
went on acquisition sprees — buying companies
not because they were adding value but because they
were empire building. Value propositions can be
left behind in a headlong rush to pursue imaginary or
elusive alternative sources of value.
Interestingly, too, the very same traits or behaviors
that made leaders successful earlier in their careers
can derail them. Indeed, what has been a highly
successful strategy for a CEO over many years can
unwind in spectacular fashion when the context
(inevitably) changes.
As Ed Rapp, president of Caterpillar’s Resource
Industries group, explains: “The biggest risk in this
job — and I would say any job of leadership — is
isolation and filters. Every time I look at a presentation,
the question I ask myself is, how many filters has
it been through before it got to me? If you maintain
access throughout all levels of the organization,
it really does give you the ability to bypass the filters
that develop in a large company. The worry is if
people don’t always put reality on the table. What I
keep trying to help people understand is that we’ve
got a lot of talented people, and if we put reality on
the table, I’m convinced as a group we can fix it.”
Mission
The terms “vision” and “mission” are often used
interchangeably. But a visionary leader is not neces-
sarily imbued with a sense of mission. In organiza-
tions where leaders have a sense of stewardship,
mission is powerful and long-lasting.
“Mission” carries with it the idea of purpose with
humility. Its essence is authenticity, built around
strong values. It is not vulnerable to personality or
charismatic styles of leadership.
Values and mission are intertwined. For healthcare
providers, for example, waiting lists and tick boxes
may have a part to play, but they are not the same
as creating patient value. In the emergency room, the
mission is about providing reassurance to each
individual patient — never about how many patients
are treated in a 24-hour period.
Mission is about values. Do leaders live the values?
And do they do so in a fast-moving context?
The measure of a good leader is his or her ability
The measure of a good leader is his or her
ability to constantly challenge value
creation to support the organization’s mission.

3
4to constantly challenge value creation to support the
organization’s mission.
Alignment
Alignment is not just about building a structure —
it’s about creating an alignment of thinking. But
how? Look around your team. Look at your corporate
center. And in your mind, identify where alignment
of thinking does not take place. What’s the conse-
quence? Is it a situation that erodes you, slowly,
and still nothing is done?
Creating alignment requires both IQ — the bandwidth
to explain complexity in such a way that people
understand what is required — and EQ, or the ability
to handle the politics in a positive way. It’s the
ability to say, “Look, this is a difficult situation, but
we’re going to turn the impossible to the possible,”
and to take the organization along with you.
In one of our interviews, a former European tele-
communications chief executive describes alignment
as a common view on key market developments,
customer needs, priorities, and the strategic road map,
as well as a strong common orientation on the
company’s values. He says the challenge is to find the
best alignment of structures and processes in
product development — across borders — and to
establish a global and local model.
Transforming from “the old telco world into the
IP world” has been more than a technological
transformation, he adds. “It has changed everything
we do. We have developed a much better focus
on customer services, proven by a lot of KPIs, which
are objective so it’s not just my wishful thinking.
And we have integrated the different operations,
particularly wireless and fixed line and content
distribution services, into one face for our customers.”
Engagement
The difference between a value-proposition leader
and a value-delivery leader is the ability to engage
the team. And that takes courage. This courage is
often quiet, humble, and not threatening.
Our research demonstrates that when the top team
does not agree, each member pulls in a different
direction. The mixed messages that ensue drive
general managers further away from the center. The
result is a structural nightmare, with the center
being seen as providing no value — a misaligned
organizational quagmire rather than a dynamic,
value-adding hub.
We found that for between 20% and 50% of the
world’s top corporate teams, strife and tension are
the norm. The most common reason for the
corporate lack of cohesion is disagreement over
the nature of the strategy being pursued, and the
next most common reason is tension over how that
strategy is implemented.
A German country manager of one major multi-
national said: “It is not so much the global marketing
strategy that is the issue but more the fact that no
one in Chicago will listen to what I have to say about
the buying habits of the German housewife. Just
because it works in America does not mean to say it
will work here. Every time I raise the issue of adapting
the strategy, everybody thinks I am challenging the
corporate center.”
Our research suggests that the inability to raise
uncomfortable issues is a deep concern for one-third
of top teams in France and eight in ten senior
managers in China. Similarly, the research suggests
that many British board members turn up at meetings
to examine the numbers and proposals but not
to dig deep enough to surface the market impact of

5
6
7
a disengaged management. Boards in the United
States fare worse. We observed boards where
the chairman, CEO, or president is rarely challenged.
Our message is that managers and board members
need to not only listen to but digest unwelcome,
undesired, or difficult-to-explain information. It can
take months of hard and intensive coaching to
enable a top team to listen.
The chairman or CEO needs to have the sensitivity to
investigate the nature of the issues at hand and
the capability to listen to unwelcome messages. He
or she also needs to know the range of covert
agendas and the capacity of each top-team member
to face up to unwelcome truths. Only then can
leaders establish the basis for engagement.
Leadership
Leadership that carries a high ethical and moral
consciousness at the board and top-team level is now
absolutely critical to competitive advantage and
value delivery. Today’s successful leader does the right
thing because it is right, even though it may cause
personal pain. Case in point: the family-owned
business owner willing to sack a family member if he
or she isn’t suited to the role. Leaders must live
their values without contradiction.
Honesty by the chief executive is a powerful force for
business transformation. From the famous example
of IBM’s Lou Gerstner, who told his senior managers
the firm was “sleepwalking off the edge of a cliff,”
to the more recent instance of Scandinavian Airlines’
CEO Rickard Gustafson negotiating with unions, the
message is clear: take your team and stakeholders
into your confidence and you will get results.
Respect is central. Notes Gustafson: “I think that the
union representatives respect what we have done,
that they realize we did it in a decent way, and that we
treated people fairly throughout the process. It
is painful, and they don’t like it, but they respect it.”
Real leaders also lead for a purpose. They believe
in the organization and the value it creates. They are
not simply going through the motions to collect
a paycheck. It is their commitment that attracts and
retains followers.
Governance
Governance is critical but often oversimplified. It is
not simply a straightforward administrative exercise.
Getting the balance right between monitoring
and mentoring is a big challenge that should not
be underestimated. Monitoring is all about the
controls, protocols, and procedures that provide early
warning signals and enable the board to take action
to prevent wrongdoing or bad decisions.
The other side of governance is mentoring, which
must encourage different ideas to be surfaced. In this
way, the board challenges, nurtures, and guides
the management team where necessary. This requires
strong relationships between the chairperson and
the board, both collectively and individually.
Unfortunately, boards often underplay mentoring
in favor of monitoring. This is dangerous. Boards need
to carefully mentor strategy execution through the
governance fault lines. This type of stewardship takes
time, commitment, and consideration of how and
with whom to engage.
Wisdom
Wisdom is often hard-earned through years of
experience. But experience alone is not enough. The
factor that magnifies and empowers experience
and turns it into wisdom is humility — knowing you
cannot possibly be the fount of all wisdom. Practically
speaking, it means a willingness to keep on learning.
If IBM’s leaders had listened to the voices of diver-
sity within the company when it was on the brink of
collapse, pre-Gerstner, the company might have

avoided much pain. Those who spoke out were
seen as being disruptive and not following the
company line.
A major indicator of wisdom is a leader’s ability to
work through a dilemma or handle seemingly no-win
situations. The way to rise above dilemmas that
have business, ethical, and personal sensitivities is
for a leader to be committed to the team and the
greater whole.
Context and corporate direction will dictate how
wisdom is balanced on top teams and boards. “Old”
does not necessarily mean wise, just as “young”
does not necessarily mean innovative. Wisdom comes
from a mind-set of diversity and openness — skills
that can be learned and reinforced through coaching
and mentoring.
For example, the Whirlpool board spans four decades,
providing what CEO Jeff Fettig calls “crossover
intelligence.” He says: “We have one member in his
70s, two or three in their 60s, two or three in their
50s, and two in their mid-40s,” with a balance of
wisdom and subject-matter expertise being the result.
He says that wisdom is the ability of wise, savvy
people to face tough situations and cut through com-
plication to either tell the leadership to “do the
right thing” or support them fully in a difficult situa-
tion or opportunity.
  
At a time when generational change is converging
with dramatic changes in business models and
businesses everywhere are facing an unprecedented
degree of volatility and uncertainty, the findings
from our research suggest that senior executives need
to focus on:
• Value-delivery (versus value-proposition)
leadership
• Better alignment and engagement of the
board with the leadership team
• Aligning the culture through the engagement
of all key stakeholders
• Facilitating and nurturing diversity of
thinking as the glue for engagement with
the company’s culture
The seven disciplines outlined in this article are a
starting point for thinking about the way forward,
and indeed there are no easy answers when it
comes to achieving sustainable growth. Nonetheless,
when organizations start down the path of embed-
ding the seven disciplines in their skills, behaviors,
and processes, they dramatically improve their
odds of achieving extraordinary, enduring, and trans-
formative improvements in performance. 
About the authors
Andrew Kakabadse (a.kakabadse@henley.ac.uk) is
a professor at Henley Business School in the United
Kingdom. Steve Mullinjer (smullinjer@heidrick.com)
is Heidrick Struggles’ regional leader for Asia Pacific
and the Middle East; he is based in the Hong Kong
office. David Pumphrey (dpumphrey@heidrick.com)
is a partner emeritus in the Sydney office.

Shaping the agile
organization
t h e o r g a n i z a t i o n
33
Leading change:
Five CEOs on the power of
culture transformation
40
Winning the race
43
The importance of a growth
mind-set in a digital world

Leading change: Five CEOs on the power of
culture transformation
Smart leaders shape their company’s culture — instead of allowing the culture to shape
the company.
Culture has become one of the most important words in C-suites and corporate
boardrooms, yet when it comes to shaping an organization’s culture to achieve
enduring advantage, many companies fall woefully short.1 As global organizations
navigate the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” they are grappling with the need for
urgent, dramatic, and fast-moving changes in strategies for leadership, talent, and
organizational performance. Culture is the catalyst for achieving these goals,
but it is too often overlooked.
Through a combination of purposeful leadership, broad engagement, and focused
sustainability, smart leaders help shape their company’s culture — instead of
allowing the culture to shape the company. Creating a healthy, high-performing,
and agile organizational culture provides companies with a measurable, lasting
source of competitive advantage.
Following are excerpts from interviews with five CEOs who have focused on creating
organizational cultures built on a foundation of agility, helping their companies
outperform the competition and stay ahead of the curve.
Gary Shorb, CEO of Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare
Dominique Leroy, CEO of Proximus
Basil Scarsella, CEO of UK Power Networks
Bryan Jordan, CEO of First Horizon National Corporation
Joe Robles, former CEO of USAA
1 Deloitte’s Global Human Capital Trends 2015 report, for example, finds that “culture and engagement” is the most important issue
that companies face around the world, yet only 12% of executives believe their organizations are excellent at effectively driving the
desired culture.

Today, the Power of One culture serves as the touch-
stone for Methodist Le Bonheur’s patient- and
family-centered culture of compassion. At the heart
of Power of One are MLH's values: service, quality,
integrity, teamwork, and innovation. The values are
continually reinforced to help people understand
how to work together to serve patients, their families,
and the community.
Shorb says the results have been outstanding: “We
have seen improvement on every front. We are
now in the top 5% in the nation in associate satisfac-
tion. In clinical quality, almost every one of our
quality scores is in the top quartile. We have gone
from a BBB bond rating to an A+ bond rating.
Our customer satisfaction — our patient satisfaction
scores — also are achieving top quartile.”
Shorb's advice to other leaders and CEOs on leading
a culture change: “Be ready to be open to changing
your own style and reassessing how you lead. The CEO,
as well as his or her direct reports, needs to be
totally committed. That commitment level has got to
be what really sustains the effort and gets you along
the journey and gets you the results that you need.”
Shorb emphasizes that for a culture transformation
to really take hold and become part of the company’s
DNA, it requires leaders at the top being fully
committed and aligned and casting the right “shadow
of the leader.” “It is all about leadership,” he notes.
“We have 1,200 leaders in the organization. Getting the
culture improvement fully implemented through-
out the whole organization takes all 1,200 of them
being aligned. The ‘shadow of the leader’ concept
is something that you have to be constantly aware of.
If you send signals that are inconsistent with the
values, then you can derail the entire effort.“
Memphis-based healthcare system Methodist
Le Bonheur (MLH) focused on creating and
embedding a “Power of One” culture throughout its
eight hospitals — including 12,500 leaders, clinical
staff, and frontline employees — to help it become
one of the best in the nation.
CEO Gary Shorb knew culture would be a competi-
tive advantage and the key to realizing several
goals, including achieving outstanding financial
results; attaining top quartile scores in clinical
quality and patient satisfaction; improving employee
engagement scores; and creating a consistent,
patient-centered experience across all hospitals
and systems.
“All organizations have culture; it’s a matter of you
shaping it or it shaping you,” says Shorb. “You can
have all the best talent, the best plans, and you
can have the best strategy, objectives, and goals. But
without the culture piece being absolutely right,
we were not going to achieve the kind of results we
needed to achieve. It is the magic that makes
everything else work.”
Gary Shorb, CEO of Methodist
Le Bonheur Healthcare
“Be ready to be open to changing your own
style and reassessing how you lead.”

Proximus (formerly Belgacom) — the majority
state-owned telecommunications, IT, and media com-
pany operating in Belgium and international
markets — had become overly complex and slow in
an industry marked by increased competition. In
addition, a period of leadership turmoil and market
saturation resulted in years of zero growth and
lost market share. The CEO and leadership team were
seeking to transform the business and restore it to
healthy growth and profitability by becoming more
agile to stay competitive and relevant to customers.
Getting there, however, would require a trans-
formation of company culture, as agility and a growth
mind-set were not part of the organization’s DNA.
Notes CEO Dominique Leroy: “We had not been
growing for 10 years, neither top nor bottom line. The
main driver for me was to get our company back
to growth by changing the environment from having
silos, a bit of fear and risk avoidance, to a much
more collaborative and transparent culture. I thought
if we could only unleash the power of all this talent
in a consistent way, with one vision and a good
collaborative spirit, we could get much better results
out of the company.”
Dominique Leroy,
CEO of Proximus
“Translate the culture you are shaping into
business successes, because that’s the way most
of the people will then start following you.”
Leroy says that leading the company’s “Good to
Gold” culture for the past few years has been
crucial in helping to right the financial ship. Strong
financials throughout 2014 and the first quarter
of 2015 continued to demonstrate positive revenue
performance, a growing customer base, and
good progress in cost reduction. “What made the
difference was the culture, says Leroy. This
was the glue that enabled us to bring all these trans-
formational elements together and give people
an appealing goal. Having a culture with the values
of collaboration, agility, and accountability —
together with a clear purpose — helps people to
make the right trade-offs on a collective basis.
You really see the dynamic changing in the company
because the learning and growth become concrete,
anchored in the success of the company.”
Leroy’s advice to other leaders and CEOs on leading
a culture change: “It’s very important that you can
translate the culture you are shaping into business
successes, because that’s the way most of the
people will then start following you. It is important to
engage the whole leadership team and the extended
leadership team. We had to make sure that they
understood where we wanted to go as a business,
why we needed to shift the culture, and what
their role was in the whole culture-shaping process.”
She adds that culture is not a project but a journey
and that “you have to continue to invest in it and make
sure that, as the leadership team, you are role
models to keep the new culture alive in the company.”
“In the end, we are not doing things that are very
different from our competitors, says Leroy. We’re
investing, we’re transforming, and we’re cutting
costs. But why are we successful so far while others
are not? I think it’s about the soft issues. It’s about
changing the mind-set of the people. What made the
difference was the culture. This was the glue that
enabled us to bring all these transformational
elements together.”

UK Power Networks (UKPN) is a power distribution
company formed in 2011 when Cheung Kong
Infrastructure Holdings (CKI) acquired three electricity
networks in London and in the southeast and
east of England. UKPN delivers electricity to a quarter
of Britain's population — about 20 million people
and 8 million households.
CEO Basil Scarsella decided to shape the culture
at the newly formed company, which has
5,000 employees, to help enable it to fulfill its goals
of delivering a first-class network as measured
by reliability, customer service, cost efficiency, and
safety — all while becoming an employer of choice
and respected corporate citizen.
Among the awards UKPN has earned: 2012 Utility of
the Year; 2013 Best Business Award for Best Customer
Focus; 2014 gold award from Investors in People
for the way it leads and develops its workforce to
constantly improve service; 2014–15 national annual
award from The Job Crowd — voted by graduates
among the Top 100 companies to work for; and 2014
Utility Star Awards for Customer Service, Team
of the Year (operational), Team of the Year (customer
facing), and joint winner for the Long Service Award.
“The best thing we have seen is a significant improve-
ment in performance in just about every area,” says
Scarsella. “Engagement from the employees between
2011 and 2012, for example, improved by something
like 25%. The reliability of the network has improved
by 40%. Ultimately, getting judged to be utility
of the year, I think, is a reflection of everything we've
done and, importantly, the commitment that the
management team and the employees have put in.”
Scarsella’s advice to other leaders and CEOs on
leading a culture change: “You can’t just give lip
service to engagement. You’ve actually got to
do things that deliver the message to the employees
that you care about what they think about the
organization. The other important thing from one
year to the next is to listen to what the employees
are telling you and actually do something about it.”
Basil Scarsella, CEO of UK Power
Networks
“You can’t just give lip service to engagement.”
“You’ve actually got to do things that deliver
themessagetotheemployeesthatyoucare
aboutwhattheythinkabouttheorganization.”

Bryan Jordan became president and CEO of First
Horizon National Corporation on September 1, 2008.
Within months, the economic crisis struck the finan-
cial services industry with a fury. As a result, there was
a near-complete turnover of the executive manage-
ment, followed by two years of painful downsizing —
to fewer than 5,000 full-time employees, from more
than 13,000 — and a winding down of the company’s
national mortgage lending and commercial real
estate businesses. Jordan understood that to rebuild
and shift strategic focus for the future, the com-
pany’s leaders needed to immediately alter the long-
established Firstpower culture to respond to an
environment that was rapidly changing internally as
well as externally.
“Your greatest strength can be your culture, and your
greatest weakness at times can be your culture if
it's not aligned to the changing circumstances,” says
Jordan. “In 2008–2009, we believed at the time —
and I still believe today — that the financial services
industry was going to go through one of the greatest
periods of change because you had just such a
tremendous number of external influences that were
driving it: the financial crisis, consolidation, regulation,
the changing economy. We felt that taking that
strong culture and adding the flexibility for the future
was vitally important to us.”
By shifting the long-established “Firstpower” culture
to one that is more flexible, nimble, and accountable,
a stronger and more formidable organization
emerged. As a result, First Horizon has returned to
profitability and improved performance and is better
prepared for significant industry changes ahead.
“We’re having better conversations about the impor-
tant things,” says Jordan. “We're getting to the
heart of issues, and we're tackling them much more
aggressively than I think we otherwise would have.
The culture has been one of the hallmark strengths
of First Horizon and First Tennessee,2 and I think
our team was able to maintain that strength in
a period of significant change. Our core companies
have done very well. They've been strong and
getting stronger. That shows up in our customer
satisfaction data, both our internal and our external
surveying, and it shows up in the anecdotes that
we get, the experiences around the organization.”
Jordan’s advice to other leaders and CEOs on leading
a culture change: “The culture of the organization
and the environment that come from not only the
CEO but also its leadership in totality are critical to
making an organization successful. I think the pace of
change and the culture need to be very much aligned,
and so I don't intend to let up at all.”
Bryan Jordan, CEO of First Horizon
National Corporation
“Your greatest strength ...and your greatest
weakness ...can be your culture.”
2 A regional bank owned by First Horizon.

While many companies struggled during the recent
recession, USAA, the financial services company
serving military families, experienced some of the best
success in its 88-year history. The company is bask-
ing in robust growth, top ratings for financial strength,
and accolades for customer service from the likes of
Bloomberg Businessweek and others.
When General Joe Robles took over as president and
CEO in 2007, he wanted to take the company to
even higher levels of excellence to fulfill its mission.
There was a need to shift the strategy from siloed
lines of business individually serving members to an
entire enterprise serving the members with a com-
mitted focus on the culture of going above and
beyond — and doing the right thing because it’s the
right thing to do.
Robles took the role of leading the culture to heart
and called himself the “chief culture officer.” He
led the creation of six cultural principles called “My
Commitment to Service” that were established
to engage, align, and focus individuals on USAA’s
mission, customers, and fellow employees. Robles,
who retired as CEO in 2015, attributes a big part
of USAA’s success to these six cultural pillars: “People
ask me all the time what is USAA’s secret sauce?
I keep telling them that a big piece of it is the culture
of this company, and it has given us a huge business
advantage. You can see the improvement in customer
satisfaction. You can see the business results and
how we outperformed a lot of our competitors over
the past three to four years.”
Under Robles’s leadership, USAA grew 53% in mem-
bers, 45% in revenues, and 59% in assets owned and
managed — all during one of the worst economic
downturns in recent history. During that same period,
which included some of the costliest catastrophe
insurance years in USAA history, the company returned
$7.3 billion to members and customers through
dividends, distributions, bank rebates, and rewards
and remained among just a handful of companies to
earn the highest ratings for financial strength from
Joe Robles,
former CEO of USAA
“I am, by definition, the chief culture officer.”
“We believe that improving and strengthening
our culture are paramount. Culture is not a
gimmick, a promotion, or a one-time event.”

Moody’s, A.M. Best, and Standard Poor’s. USAA
also consistently receives awards and high ratings
for member service, employee well-being, and
financial strength.
“We believe that improving and strengthening our
culture are paramount. Culture is not a gimmick, a
promotion, or a one-time event,” says Robles. “People
think you can take a strong culture and build it up
and then just move on to something else and then it’s
going to sustain itself. Unfortunately, that’s not the
way the world works.”
Robles’s advice to other leaders and CEOs on leading
a culture change: “People ask me all the time if
I think it’s important for the CEO to own the culture or
whether I should have a chief culture officer on my
staff. I am the person most accountable to the board
of directors for the results of this company and the
culture of this company, so I am, by definition, the
chief culture officer. One of the things that I will
pass on to my successor will be a strong and vibrant
culture that is focused on our customers, that is
focused on our employees, and that continues our
history of service and strong financial results. If I can
do that, then I will have done my job as a CEO.” 
To watch videos of the full interviews, or to watch or read additional interviews with CEOs
and other business leaders, visit senndelaney.com.

The New Transformational Leader: 5 Imperatives for Thriving in a Hyperconnected World

The New Transformational Leader: 5 Imperatives for Thriving in a Hyperconnected World

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The New Transformational Leader: 5 Imperatives for Thriving in a Hyperconnected World